Originally appeared on E! Online.
Jenna Bush Hager wanted a little more life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in college.
The former first daughter revealed that there was a time she escaped from the Secret Service while attending the University of Texas at Austin during her father George W. Bush’s first term as president.
“I would be kind of embarrassed — and I hesitate even saying this,” Hager confessed on the Oct. 23 episode of “TODAY,” “but I dated a football player at Texas for a brief time. And I was embarrassed that the Secret Service would know that.”
The 43-year-old added, “I don’t know why, but I was.”
But as she thought about it, the daytime personality shared with guest co-host Savannah Guthrie, “I just didn’t want them to know I had a new boyfriend because senior year was active for me.”
As Guthrie joked, “Lots of walks of shame,” Hager quipped with a laugh, “Lots of them.”
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“So I had my friends sneak me,” Hager recalled. “I was in the back of the car and they snuck me past the Secret Service.”
And she was shocked she finally revealed the truth all these years later, saying, “I’ve never admitted this.”
Guthrie, meanwhile, was delighted to learn one of her best friend’s secrets.
“Wait a minute. You snuck out from the Secret Service?” the 53-year-old exclaimed. “So they thought you were at home in bed reading the Bible or whatever and you were at the football player’s house?”
As Hager responded in the affirmative, Guthrie held up her hand for a high five, saying, “Put it right here. That’s my girl.”
But Hager didn’t make a habit of evading the Secret Service.
“It was only time I escaped them,” she shared, “and then we broke up soon after.”
Hager — who is now married to Henry Hager, with whom she shares children Mila, 12, Poppy, 10 and Hal, 6 — has been candid about the challenges of life in the public eye, as her father’s presidency meant she even needed a Secret Service alias as a teen.
“I didn’t love it,” she admitted on “TODAY” in September, joking that she was ready to “declassify” the information.
“My name was Holly Crawford,” she shared. “I know, Holly sounds like a good time, doesn’t she?”
And while she didn’t come up with the name, she did have an idea as to where it might have come from.
“Crawford was the name of where we would go — or where my parents had the house,” she explained. “But also: holly, bush. You know, Holly, like holly.”
“I mean I don’t know, I just made [that] up,” she said with a laugh. “But all I know is that if Holly Crawford shows up, she’s ready to order a margarita.”
For more hilarious celebrity confessions, keep reading.
(E! and “TODAY” are both part of the NBCUniversal family.)
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